The murderer had lived in the zombie quarter of the city. The housing was cheap and if you could stand the smell and constant groaning of the zombies, you could actually live rather nicely here. I got out of the car,

Victor looked at me. “I was wondering why you don’t just ask the guy where this girl is. I mean, if you apply enough force even the world’s most secure safe will open,” he said as we walked into the building.

I shook my head. “This guy planned it all from the start. We didn’t know about this seventh girl until mere seconds before his execution. I would love to ask him who and where she is, but you see that is quite impossible,” I replied.

A sickly-looking wolf furry janitor peered up at us from behind his little janitorial desk. His fur was ragged and seemed to be false in several parts around his body. He had an unmistakable twitch, repeating words; his speech was a mixture of profanity and unrelated notions mixed with hyperactive questioning.

“Good morning, my good man,” I greeted him as he slurped up what looked like a rodent tail. We had obviously interrupted his lunch.

“Man? Man? Do I look like one of those bloody high-and-mighty, moonaddicted, howling lycans? Do you know the average life span of a lycan is half the time of the elvish folk, fucking disgusting knife ears I don’t want them in my building, building,” he said as he looked down and with a wide wolf’s smile he snatched up a loudly screaming rat. “Got you, little snack pack, pack,” he continued. He seemed to be completely oblivious to us standing there.

Victor raised his eyebrow and looked at the twitchy wolf as he slammed the rat on the desk, leaving a red stain, before throwing it into his snout. With a loud smacking he ate the rat and looked back up at Victor and me. “So what can good old Wigor do for the lady and the cat, cat?” he asked as he licked his nose.

“Your name is Wigor?” Victor asked.
He nodded. “That’s what they call me here, Wolf Igor, Wigor for short and easy, easy.”

I looked at Victor and shook my head, signaling we wouldn’t get a good conversation with this wolf. “Okay, Wigor, can you get me the key to apartment 211?” I asked him.

He gave me a suspicious look as he reached under his desk. “Police already came, found nothing, my building for good people, people,” he snarled.

I just knew he was about to draw a gun on us; I had to choose my words carefully. “Do we look like police to you, Wigor? Come on, a girl and an old cat in the police? No, we are just friends and want to get some things from his apartment,” I said in my sweetest voice.

He raised his hand back on top of the desk as his eyes moved to Victor. “Lion could be police. Humans say he is leader of animal kingdom, so why not king of police? Is that what you want, cat, huh? To be king of good old Wigor, king over his building, that has been in the city from long before the event that let the humans here, strange creatures that they fear so much and still think they can tell us what to do. Human in 211 he no speak of lion friend, he never spoke much, always gave Wigor nice giblets, giblets.”

I looked at the wolf and held my hand out. “If you give me the key I can see if he still has giblets in his apartment,” I said. He thought for a moment, then reached over to the key cabinet and took out the key to 211.

*** Victor looked at me and sighed. “Well, there goes my theory of not having to search a thousand clocks,” he said as he gestured at the walls.

The apartment was a total mess. It was hard to believe a person had actually lived here. My heart sank as I saw that the walls were littered with clocks; all of them were stopped at one minute past seven p.m.

Not wanting to have told the wolf all lies, I walked to the fridge and opened it. I was greeted by the loud buzzing of a swarm of angry flies. The inside of the refrigerator was filled with rotting meat; it looked like rat. I could barely keep myself from throwing up; the smell was just awful.

Victor walked over to examine one of the clocks. “Do you think it is a coincidence all these clocks are stopped at exactly the same time? Even the hand that counts the seconds is at the same place. This was one obsessed individual.” He took the clock off the wall and turned it around, feeling the rim for anything. I closed the door to the smelly meat and looked over at him. His large head shook, making his mane wave.

“If we have to check all those clocks for anything noteworthy, we are going to be here for hours,” I said as I picked up another clock and tilted it over. There was nothing. No paper, no small markings, nothing. It frustrated me; now that I was here I wanted to find a clue to where the seventh girl was, even if it was a puddle of blood … anything would do.

Victor had already checked several other clocks and then hung them back where he had taken them from. He had used some paint to mark the ones he’d examined with a red paw print. He shook his head every single time he placed one back after picking it up.

“And what if this is just a waste of time, what if he just wanted us here to check all these clocks?” I asked him. I felt overwhelmed by the sheer amount of clocks.

Victor shook his head. “No, that wouldn’t make sense. He wouldn’t have given the hints Tomorrow and Time, if he’d just wanted to waste time. And clocks are what you use to measure time with.”

Suddenly the metal mail slot in the door rattled and a newspaper fell through. I walked to the door and knelt down to pick up the paper. “That is strange, it seems somebody must still come here,” I said as I looked at the paper.

Victor looked at me and tilted his head. “What do you mean someone must still come here? It doesn’t look like anyone has lived here in some time,” he said.

I nodded and stood up, taking the paper to him. “Exactly, and this is a daily paper so why isn’t there a pile littering the floor? Someone must come here and pick up the mail and the papers.”

“Good call there, Miss Duluc,” he said as he looked around. “Maybe it’s that janitor, Wigor, coming in for his giblets?” He picked up another clock.

I shook my head. “No, if it had been Wigor then the refrigerator wouldn’t have been filled with rotten meat; I am sure he would have eaten it all. And why would he pick up a newspaper?” I laid the paper in a basket that already held several yellowed magazines. It made more sense now. He hadn’t been working alone, and whoever was helping him had been coming here several times a week, maybe even daily.

Victor had already looked at twenty-five clocks. “Are you going to help or just stand there?” he asked, a little annoyed.

I nodded. “I hope this guy’s toilet is cleaner than this here,” I said as I walked around looking for a door to the bathroom. The door was easy found; there was a large sign on it reading, “TOILET.” The toilet itself was surprisingly clean.

As I walked in I noticed the small daily calendar on the wall. It held a silly daily spell that made little sense to me as it was a human saying: “Seize the day.” It was a distinct human calendar as it held different names for the months and days. The date on the little calendar was 19-01.

“TARA!” Victor shouted from the living room. I turned around, drew my gun and rushed to the living room. Victor had seemingly also given up on his quest to check the clocks and was looking at the paper.

“What’s wrong, Victor? Found something?” I asked him as he held the newspaper in his paws, trembling. “Nineteen zero one,” he said.
I lifted my eyebrow. “What does that mean?”
He looked at me. “That is the date on the paper,” he said.
I shrugged. “So?” I replied.

He lowered the paper. “That is a human dating, but it is not today. It is not even close to the human date we are now on. The measurement of time is not the clock, it’s a calendar,” he said.

I looked at the clocks. “So the time was not set to a time but a date?” I asked.
Victor nodded. “How many calendars have you seen in this place?”
“Just one, in the toilet,” I replied.

Victor pushed me aside, burst into the toilet and tore the calendar off the wall. As he returned to the living room he slammed the calendar down and pulled off the front paper that read 19-01 and turned it around. “Nothing, absolutely nothing,” he growled, and tossed the calendar across the room.

I walked over to him and smiled kindly. “It was a good call. I wouldn’t have seen it myself.” I picked up the front note and looked at it. “There is something on here, though I just can’t read it; it looks invisible.” The paper turned browner, and he smiled. “Clever bastard,” he said, as he placed the note back down. “He used lemon juice to create invisible ink. You can’t see it until you lightly burn the paper.”

Victor looked at me. “Invisible? Could it be?” he said as he walked over and took the piece paper from me. He took out his matchbook, lit a single match and ran it under the paper, just far enough away that it didn’t burn it.

I could see that he was right; there in the same handwriting was a riddle. “What can run but never walks, What has a mouth but never talks, What has a head but never weeps, And has a bed but never sleeps?” Victor read out loud. He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I have no idea what this one is,” he said as he looked at me, and at the same time we shouted, “The newspaper delivery person!”

Next Chapter: Another piece of the puzzle